Category Archives: Web 2.0

General, Web 2.0

Good Work

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newspaper by aloshbennett

About five years ago, I read a very interesting book called Good Work. It is very dense with a lot of information but it was very clear in its premise. We are happiest when the work we do aligns with our personal ethics.

in this book, the authors examined two groups of people who chose a vocation because they wanted to help others and to change the world: geneticists and journalists.

Many people entered each field for noble reasons. But only the scientists were happy with their choice, while many of the reporters were not. The book indicated that this was because the needs of the industry they chose did not match their personal viewpoints.

The geneticists were pretty happy with their jobs. Journalists were not.

The book indicated that newspapers exist to sell advertising. Advertising is what pays the bills. But this is often at odds with the reasons many journalists enter that profession.

Many reporters who really wanted to provide vital information were often held back while those who helped sell newspapers were rewarded.

Well, it looks like Web 2.0 approaches are providing an outlet for journalists to earn a living while staying close to their own personal ethics – by going directly to the community. Spot.us is devoted to providing journalists an alternate way to get paid.

And here is a recent post describing some of the things a journalist would have to do to get community funding for reporting.

Ten Tips For Journalists to Fundraise Money:
[Via Spot.Us – Community Funded Reporting]

I’ll admit it, sometimes when nobody is looking I’ll watch a late night infomercial. These people are fascinating to watch. They are master salespeople.

I realize the idea of a journalist fundraising money for their work is new. Normally it’s a duty we’d hand off to the advertising/marketing people and stick to creating content. But “the times they are-a changing” and so is the job description. There is a reason why freelance journalists have to write a “pitch.” They are selling their services. Normally we sell to high-end repeat customers (editors) because they have a freelance budget. But Spot.Us believes that journalists should pitch the public and that if members of the public band together they too can have a freelance budget.

Rather than treat journalists fundraising as taboo, we should have a healthy discussion about the right and wrong approach. I don’t claim to know the answers, so your comments are valued.

This is something that will be worked out as they go along. I don’t think it is going to replace the mainstream media. But it is a novel approach and will heavily use Web 2.0 approaches for success.

What are the best practices? Are they different for text and video? How can journalists best explain the value of their services? I don’t claim to know the answers to these questions (so your comments are highly valued), but I do think these questions need to be tackled. If journalists are going to become more independent, they need to learn how to re-master the art of the pitch.

The list below is my own and I think will evolve over time.

10 Things to Keep in Mind To Get Community Funded Reporting
[More]

The list is actually a nice one for anyone working to earn a living by using Web 2.0 conversations. Creating a pitch. Finding the community.

The one thing the web can not duplicate is a human being. Going directly to their audience is a way that journalists can earn a living that more closely aligns with their ethics, just like recording artists and filmmakers are doing.

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Science, Web 2.0

What scientists are we talking about?

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research by SqueakyMarmot
Obligatory Reading of the Day: Opening up Scientific Culture [A Blog Around The Clock]:
[Via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

Why are so many scientists reluctant to make full use of Web 2.0 applications, social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and commenting capabilities on some online journals?

Michael Nielsen wrote a very thoughtful essay exploring this question which I hope you read carefully and post comments.

Michael is really talking about two things – one is pre-publication process, i.e., how to get scientists to find each other and collaborate by using the Web, and the other is the post-publication process, i.e., how to get scientists to make their thoughts and discussions about published works more public.

Those of you who have been reading me for a while know that I am thinking along some very similar lines. If you combine, for instance, my review of Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge with

On my last scientific paper, I was both a stunt-man and the make-up artist with Journal Clubs – think of the future! with The Scientific Paper: past, present and probable future, you will see a similar thread of thinking.

But, what do you think?

Read the comments on this post…

Michael Nielsen’s essay is well worth reading, since it goes into some detail about the need for openness in science. It has a lot of depth and it very thought provoking.

The comments are also very interesting, with an ongoing dialog between skeptics and believers. But a lot of these discussions only examine the barriers and pressures of a very small slice of the researchers in the US.

The science that is discussed in these essays really only encompasses those scientists in research universities where tenure competition is the fiercest. Take a look at some recent statistics (2006):

22 million scientists/engineers in US
18.9 million actually employed
69.4% work in the business sector
11.8% work for the government
8.2% work at 4 year institutions
9.7% work in the business/industry sector for a non-profit

This discussion seems to have focused on just a small fraction (but an important one) of the number of scientists who would benefit from these tools. These researchers are funded by grants and are in tenure-track positions at 4 year research universities.

More scientists work at non-profits. What sorts of pressures are brought to bear there to prevent open collaboration? How different are these pressures from a research university? Those in business might also benefit from these approaches but have another set of barriers. Can they be surmounted?

This discussion is really important but it also conflates a large number of scientists/engineers who have different needs and pressures. There are 12 million in business who will have different needs than the 1.6 million at research universities.

How do Web 2.0 approaches impact them differently? Will some be more readily accepting of these tools than others?

We need to realize that scientists encompass a much larger group than those in tenure track positions at universities.

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Web 2.0

The synthetic organization, part 3

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pencils by Paul Worthington
{See The synthetic organization, Part 1
The synthetic organization, Part 2 }


Pixar is not like any other studio. Part of this may stem from the fact that its medium of choice is all about synthesis, in the ancient Greek definition of bringing together. Every frame has to be created. A director and a cinematographer can not just sit together and film a reality that already exists.

This goes beyond collaboration, as almost every film is a collaboration. Every single pixel in a CGI has to be put there for a reason. But, for it to be realistic in any sense, these pixels have to be put together in an integrated whole.

So the medium for a computer animated movie is very different than a normal motion picture. Pixar is the only studio that seems to have really incorporated this idea into its being, creating a model for how to use synthesis to produce products that no one else can. And generating an organizational structure that maintains this drive for synthesis.

Synthesis requires a strong social network to be most effective. Especially with something as complex as creating a new environment, while also pushing the edge of the technology and creating a stunning narrative. Part of this can be seen in the interesting approach Pixar has for leaders.

The lack of hierarchy seen with Web 2.0 approaches does not mean that there are no leaders, no one at the top. But it is a different sort of leader than often expected, one who helps hold the central vision of the community and can act as a facilitator of the community’s needs.

Leaders at Pixar come forward, do their part and then sit back to let someone else lead. Usually they come from inside the community but sometimes they have come from outside. This almost ad hoc form of leadership is one of the main differences between Pixar and other organizations that are built on hierarchies.

This form of leadership reminded me of a quote from Margaret Wheatley’s essay on the Unplanned Organization.

I also want to emphasize that emergent organizations are leader-full, not leaderless. Leaders emerge and recede as needed. Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.

Her description of the emergent properties of a self-organizing community seems very odd, yet it has many overlaps with Pixar.

The reason I think this is so problematic for us is that you cannot plan; you can only watch once you’re in the process of being together. You can only notice what’s happening, and then tinker with it. Instead of creating dream teams, you just get into the process of organizing and see what emerges. That feels unplanned, it looks messy, it smacks us in the face; it goes against all the ways we have been taught to be effective leaders, or effective individuals. In contemporary society, we’ve gone crazy with goal-setting and planning and thinking about our lives in a linear progression.

An organization as a simulacrum of life. While her metaphor may go a little too far, it does have some real insights.

The interconnectedness of the Web 2.0 social network may have emergent properties that permit novel solutions to complex problems. Leadership, which is needed to complete any difficult task, is simply a form of behavior which emerges from the community as needed.

Look at some of her points.

Organizations are made up of intelligent beings who can be mobilized for change.
Experimentation is necessary.
Messes are used to produce well-ordered solutions.
The best solution is the one that works, not the most elegant.
There are many paths that can be taken, so understanding when to change paths is important.
There are more opportunities as the community progresses along its path.

Anyone working in a sector requiring synthesis for solutions should have a structure mimicking the Unplanned Organization. Machine-based hierarchies focussed on defined processes may not be the best approach .

Becoming a truly synthetic organization provides the best model and Pixar seems to come very close to this. In doing so, it is able to retain its creative talent while providing opportunities not seen with other companies.

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Open Access, Web 2.0

The synthetic organization, part 2

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pencils 2 by Paul Worthington

{See The Synthetic Organization, Part 1 }

Pixar is different from every other movie studio. Why?

One aspect is mentioned in the article – a leader at Pixar for one movie becomes a follower and supporter for the next. They remain engaged in each other’s projects. The success of one helps the success of all.

But I also believe that there is a little more than this. Because each Pixar movie is more than just telling a story; it is adding to the tool box being used by all the innovators at Pixar. The impact of each movie to this continually enlarging storehouse of knowledge engages these innovators who work at the leading edge of technology.

There are other computer animated movies that are quite good. Kung Fu Panda , for instance. But many of these are really no different at their basis than regular 2-D animation. That is, the movie would not have been much different using classic cel-based animation. The gags would have been the same and just as funny.

On the other hand, each Pixar movie, besides the obvious need to create an enjoyable experience, seems to have another motive for being created. Each actually seems to be an exercise in solving a difficult technical question, one that can only be examined using computer animation.

Toy Story proved that a compelling story told by computer generated animation could actually be accomplished. A Bug’s Life examined the problem of opening up the world, from the relatively claustrophobic, medium shot world of Toy Story to an almost Cinerama widescreen not seen since How the West Was Won .

Toy Story 2 brought increased pathos and emotionality from animated characters, indicating that these completely virtual creations could twist our emotions like regular actors. Monsters, Inc. stretched the reality of the computer animated world, taking it into fantastical directions impossible in any other medium, while using increases in technology to address things like animated hair. Finding Nemo added the problematical world of water, something always very difficult to do with any animated approach.

The Incredibles began an examination of an effective animated caricature of the human form, something that had just looked too weird in previous movies (even Monster, Inc. covered up Boo in a costume for large periods of time) and was thus often avoided.

Cars demonstrated an increasing sophistication by creating normally inanimate objects that could actually act. That is, they only had eyes and mouths to convey emotion. No arms or legs to help demonstrate emotionality. It is as if an entire movie was made with only head shots.

Ratatouille now combined all the lessons previously learned into human characters that could emote. While the human figures in The Incredibles often acted in grand gestures and seemed larger than life (well, they were superheroes), the people who inhabited Ratatouille looked and acted much smaller, like regular people.

The characters did not have to ‘shout’ to convey action but could tell us what they were thinking by a subtle change in facial expression. Ratatouille was the first computer animated movie that seemed to have actual human beings occupying the screen.

And WALL-E is the solution to a dandy problem. Can a computer animated character be created that is emotionally engaging but has no human eyes or mouth, who does not speak? Essentially, could an animated movie be created combining a robotic Buster Keaton with the first 20 minutes of 2001:A Space Odyssey ?

Now illustrating a great story has been done with computers before and they can make enjoyable movies. But each Pixar movie has been on the path to creating singular movie characters that can emote on the same complex level as human actors. Pixar has put together a tool chest that no one else has.

So part of the way Pixar has kept its creative people engaged is to provide them opportunities to succeed at solving very difficult questions using tools no one else has. Recreating all of this elsewhere would be difficult.

Each of these very difficult questions (realistic animated characters, realistic surroundings, emotional connections, toolbox of techniques) had to not only be answered but had to be done inside a commercially successful creation. Simply solving these problems, as if they were some sort of Labors of Hercules, was not enough. Pixar movies also had to be have narrative that was worth the price of admission. Simply pushing the envelope would not be successful.

Pixar set itself up to attack very complex problems that required solutions at many different levels in order to achieve success, with the added problem that success would be measured by box office response. Success at just one of these levels only would result in failure.

Pixar has been able to do this because it seems to be designed along different lines than many multinational or MBA-driven companies. It is synthesizing the knowledge it learns to create something not seen before, and developing methods of organization to sustain this synthesis.

As discussed in the Harvard article , Pixar’s innovators lead some times and provide support at others. I’ll talk more soon but check out The Unplanned Organization by Margaret Wheatley to get a hint of where I am going…

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Open Access, Web 2.0

The synthetic organization, part 1

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pencil by Paul Worthington

I had dinner last night with my friend, Mark Minie, who has a tremendous range of experience in immunology, high tech and biotech. While these are always wide ranging discussions last night’s had some special resonance (e.g. WBBA, indirect costs at the UW, the paradigm shifting activities of Craig Venter, the boundary moving work of WALL-E).

The confluence of these topics, along with a host of others, led me to reflect on the changes that will take place in organizations that are supposed to support and germinate creativity.

Industrial and academic approaches towards teaching, learning and understanding have been analytical for most of the last century – breaking complex processes down into simpler units and then working to understand them. These approaches have been very successful, producing many of the scientific advances we now enjoy.

But we are more and more entering a time where synthesis (the Greek words making up synthesis accurately describe just what it is) becomes paramount. Modern organizational approaches have not been as successful here, mainly because synthesis requires a social aspect that is often not supported in academia, or in much of industry, at least the biotech industry.

Analysis can be accomplished by a single lecturer talking to a large group, breaking down complex knowledge into bite-size bits for the students. Synthesis is almost the reverse, the bite-size portions are built back up, to be used by the group to create knowledge. Few academic organizations can accomplish this easily.

Venter, throughout most of his career, has taken synthetic approaches to solving scientific questions. Others were isolating single DNA fragments individually from entire genomes(some with genes and some without), laboriously determining where on the chromosome the sequence resided, then what the actual sequence was in detail and then trying to determine just what the sequence did, if anything.

Venter cloned large numbers of gene fragments directly, rapidly sequenced them, then used computer programs to put all the pieces together and went from there.

He built up his knowledge from many different, small pieces in order to understand. His shotgun approaches revolutionized the manner by which the human genome was characterized and still has ramifications today.

But his approach, putting the pieces together to determine the whole, was met with a lot of controversy. Synthesis was just not a model for doing biological research. His work, and that of many others who understood the importance of this approach, was disruptive and paradigm-shifting.

Most organizations are great at analysis but few seem to do synthesis well. Yet, many of the problems we face today (i.e. climate change, energy use, cancer therapies) are synthetic in nature (pun intended). How does one create an environment that fosters synthesis?

Pixar is an example. Harvard Business Online has a great article detailing just how different Pixar is from every other movie studio. It has been able to maintain its innovative culture and keep its creative talent from leaving, all while delivering nine hit movies in a row.

Read about Pixar and I will have more later…

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General, Non-Profits, Science, Web 2.0

Remembering is not enough

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teacher
by foundphotoslj
Why is genetics so difficult for students to learn?:
[Via Gobbledygook]

This Sunday morning at the International Congress of Genetics, Tony Griffiths gave an interesting presentation with the above title. He identified 12 possible reasons why students have problems learning genetics. His main argument: students should learn concepts and principles and apply them creatively in novel situations (the research mode). Instead, too many details are often crammed into seminars and textbooks. In other words, students often stay at the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomy, the remembering of knowledge. The highest level, the creation of new knowledge, is seldom reached, although these skills are of course critical for a successful researcher.

Andrew Moore from EMBO talked about the teaching of genetics in the classroom. He was concerned that a survey found that molecular evolution (or molecular phylogeny) was taught in not more than 30% of European classrooms. He gave some examples of how principles of genetics can be integrated into high school teaching.

Wolfgang Nellen explained his successful Science Bridge project of teaching genetics in the classroom, using biology students as teachers. Interestingly, they have not only taught high school students, but also journalists and – priests (German language link here). Politicians were the only group of people that weren’t interested in his offer of a basic science course.

Teaching is a very specific mode of transferring information, one that has its own paths. It is an attempt to diffuse a lot of information throughout an ad hoc community.

But it is often decoupled from any social networking, usually having just an authority figure disperse data, with little in the way of conversations. There is little analysis and even less synthesis, just Remembering what is required for the next test.

Bloom’s taxonomy is a nice measure of an individual’s progress through learning but it is orthogonal to the learning a community undergoes. Most instruction today is geared towards making the individual attain the highest part of the pyramid.

How does this model change in a world where social networking skills may be more important? What happens to Remembering when Google exists? When information can be so easily retrieved, grading for Remembering seems foolish.

The methods we use to teach at most centers of higher education are, at heart, based on models first developed over a century ago. It may be that they will have to be greatly altered before some of the real potential of online social networks will occur.

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General, Web 2.0

Adobe helps

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adobe by annais
To Serif or Not To Serif? Regarding Online Readability:
[Via The Acrobat.com Blog]

There are myriad different opinions on what the best conditions are for reading text on a screen. Debates rage about whether or not to use serif fonts and how long a line of text should be. A surprisingly sensitive issue, and possibly without a clear resolution.ﾠ

Here we’ve tried to delineate a few of the more widely accepted tips on how to optimize readability. Although they can be forsaken in the name of personal style, they’re generally considered the most conducive to easy reading. Here are a few key points plucked from various takes on the subject:ﾠ

Regardless of medium, high contrast between type color and page color always contributes to optimal reading conditions. Not surprisingly, readers show a strong preference for black text on a white background (though it’s not strictly necessary; if you simply loathe the combination of white and black, any reasonably contrasting color duo will do). When in doubt, check your color scheme on Snook’s Color Contrast Check.
[More]

The Web is a different medium than paper or slides. While some things, such as contrast, remain the same, presenting text on the Web has different needs.

Its lower resolution, which allows pages to download faster, makes text harder to read. So size and font choice is important.

Remember that the user often has the ability to override the font choices that are made on the page, either by increasing the size or changing the font. So the choice of font is not as important as its presentation and of course its content.

Line spacing is another important aspect to understand. People read online from farther distances than they read a book. Poor text choices, in size, color or contrast, can make it very difficult for the content of the page to be assimilated.

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Science, Web 2.0

Medicine 2.0

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x ray by D’Arcy Norman
Why Health or Medicine 2.0? [ScienceRoll]:
[Via The DNA Network]

While medicine is usually at the forefront of new technology for diagnosis and treatment, the patient-doctor interface has not followed. Perhaps that might change soon.

Some interesting statistics have recently been published. According to Pharma 2.0:

99% of physicians are online for personal or professional purposes
85% of offices have broadband
83% consider the Internet essential to their practice

So doctors are online.

At The Deloitte Center, you will find even more details about the web usage of health consumers. Yes, there will be much more patients who seek health-related information on the web and who want to communicate with their doctors via e-mail or Skype.

And patients are ready.

We have tools to work with:

And we have concepts.

So it will happen because patients and doctors need to have contact. The question is how long will it take?

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Web 2.0

Using the net to fight disease

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mosquito by tanakawho
Crawling the Internet to track infectious disease outbreaks:
[Via EurekAlert! – Infectious and Emerging Diseases]

(Public Library of Science) Could Internet discussion forums, listservs and online news outlets be an informative source of information on disease outbreaks? A team of researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School thinks so, and it has launched a real-time, automated data-gathering system called HealthMap to gather, organize and disseminate this online intelligence. They describe their project in this week’s PLoS Medicine.
[More}

The site itself is an interesting mashup of online news sites with Google Maps. It does demonstrate how a clever mind kind use the internet to gain useful information. While there may be some bias in the types of diseases being reported, this sort of bottoms-up approach could have some real uses.

Healthmap.org: It Will Make You More Paranoid Than the Weather Channel [Mike the Mad Biologist]:
[Via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

One of the things I find fascinating about the Weather Channel is that after watching it for a while, you actually start to worry about that cold front moving through some other part of the country. You become quite paranoid about things that won’t affect you. Well, I’ve got an even better way to drive yourself nuts about scary things that won’t affect you: HealthMap.org.
[More]

This is done by monitoring published reports from around the world so it is not really a substitute for hard epidemiology (which can take some time) but it is a nice adjunct. Following the Salmonella outbreak, for instance, really permits the rapid gathering of a lot of information.
New tool anyone can use to track disease outbreaks:
[Via Effect Measure]

While CDC and FDA struggle to figure out where the Salmonella saintpaul in a large multistate outbreak is coming from they are not being forthcoming about where it has gone. We know the case total but not much about who is getting sick, where and when. There is no good scientific or privacy reason not to release more information. It’s just the usual tendency to keep control. But some of the information is “out there” anyway, in news reports and other sources of information. People interested in disease outbreaks discovered years ago that this information could be harvested and disseminated to the public health community and in 2003 this informal system provided the first evidence of the SARS outbreak in Guangdong, China, weeks before there was any official confirmation. Many of us subscribe and use the no-cost ProMed Mail service, a pioneering effort by volunteer experts to collect information on disease outbreaks in people and animals worldwide, using official and unofficial sources. The ProMed concept has now been taken several steps further by a team of disease of surveillance experts at Boston’s Childrens Hospital. They use automated internet data-mining with some additional curating by human experts to provide a web-based breaking-news disease reporting system organized by disease agent, time and geographic location, all displayed on a map of the world. The system is free and without registration or subscription barriers. It started in prototype in 2006 and now gets about 20,000 unique visits a month, mainly from the public health community (for comparison, this blog gets 30,000 to 40,000 visits a month). The system, called HealthMap, is pretty impressive. It was just highlighted on the Wired Blog so its traffic is going to increase.
[More]

It will be interesting to see how organizations such as the CDC or FDA respond to this sort of analysis. As a news aggregator, though, this is pretty useful.
Infectious disease surveillance 2.0: Crawling the Net to detect outbreaks:
[Via LISNews – Librarian And Information Science News]

“July 8, 2008 (Computerworld) While recent outbreaks of salmonella in the U.S. have made headlines, an automated real-time system that scours the Web for information about disease outbreaks spied early reports in New Mexico about suspicious gastrointestinal illnesses days before the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an official report on the problem.
The system, called HealthMap, is a free data-mining tool that extracts, categorizes, filters and links 20,000 Web-based data sources such as news sites, blogs, e-mail lists and chat rooms to monitor emerging public health issues. HealthMap, which is profiled in the July issue of the journal Public Library of Science Medicine and is open to anyone, was developed in late 2006 by John Brownstein and Clark Freifeld. Both men work in the informatics program at Children’s Hospital Boston.”
Read the full article in Computerworld at:
Infectious disease surveillance 2.0: Crawling the Net to detect outbreaks


It is kind of fun to check out what is happening around the world. There are nice pop-ups that can provide further information. I will have to play with this some more.

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Science, Web 2.0

Paper discussions

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conversations by b_d_solis
Reputation Matters:
[Via The Scholarly Kitchen]

A new (and flawed) study reveals that reputation matters. In fact, it’s core to scientific expression.
[More]

While the study may not be definitive, the ability to have a conversation on it helps tremendously. Research usually does not progress in a straight, ascending line. It switches back and forth, sometimes having to retrace its steps in order to find the right path.

Being able to discuss the results of a paper, what it did right and what it did wrong, is not something that usually has occurred in public. Now it can. I expect there to be more and more such discussions as time goes on.

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